Needing to get away for a night, I didn't stray too far and headed down to the first peninsula south of Corner Brook, the Port au Port Peninsula.

Bringing along both my mountain bike and BMX, it was the perfect evening for an hour's worth of cycling, with little wind and perfect short-sleeve temps. I was already happy with how I'd studied the elevation profiles and found a flat portion of this NL-463 highway, but this weather made things even better.

The above picture comes from the backside of the old fish plant in Piccadilly Slant. I'd end up riding out to West Bay Centre, where deciding to turn around at the sight of an approaching incline, I stuck my foot in the tire since both of my mountain bike brakes hadn't worked for months. Sure as anything, there was some Newfoundland old timer waiting right there by the roadside, who on cue, made sure to break my balls about wearing out my sneakers, lol.

Finishing up my ride and needing a few extra meters to go over some benchmark number like 15 or 20 kilometers, I wandered behind Piccadilly Junior High and found pleasant gentle dirt paths leading every which way.

With the woods roads of Western Newfoundland being rocky and too hilly, and the absence of farm lanes overall, enjoyable riding like this is rare here and I was ecstatic to find it.

Out front, I was blown away because there was even a new-to-me BMX spot at this school!

This may not seem like much, but Newfoundland villages have gravel lots and the few towns that there are, I've scoured them on foot and on Google StreetView for hours if not days, meaning that everything is picked clean within a six-hour's drive.

Unfortunately my BMX had a flat tire though, so it was time to move on. The ledge would thank its lucky stars, narrowly avoiding the hurting I would've put in on it.

Driving along, I passed this house that's pretty incredible in its longevity. It has looked exactly the same since I moved to Newfoundland twelve years ago and headed down here on one of my first weekend drives.

The lack of vandalism in rural Newfoundland isn't completely shocking, but how hasn't a floor or roof joist failed? At this point, I'm convinced it's someone's cabin or summer getaway.

Regardless, it's gorgeous and I love that some kid's TikTok handle isn't spraypainted across the side.

Over in Winterhouse, I've always wondered about this structure next to the graveyard. Turns out this is their old one-room schoolhouse - advertised as the only one-room schoolhouse still standing on the west coast of Newfoundland.

There was a number to call for an interior tour, but I still needed to find somewhere to camp tonight, so I added it to the to-do list for a future trip.

I didn't have any stealth campsites scouted out, but passing a rough quad path leading off the main road and there not being much space between me and the ocean, I parked the whip and sized up whether the path was passable; before then bombing down and finding a glorious, grassy clearing right by the ocean.

Oh, this would certainly do.

There wasn't much for settlements further along the road either, so I wasn't all too concerned with anyone coming along and telling me to get lost.

Walking into the surrounding tall grasses, I found a few fallen walls, a bed frame, this old well, and similar detritus.

Now there aren't really a lot of homesteads just off in the Newfoundland wilderness, but this all pointed to this site being one of those rare old homesteads, instead of just a spot where someone had a cabin.

There was so much exposed shoreline too, where I could savour the day's end amongst the whimbrels, spotted sandpipers, and even the erratics. There wasn't a soul around either, and next to no one passed by on the gravel road up above my campsite. Life was good.

Covid times led to thoughts of being stuck in Windsor instead of Western Newfoundland and thinking about how camping like this is something I'll miss if I ever manage to move back.

I know Nailhed finds quarries up on the Lake Huron shore with this same tranquility, but it's rare and that's after a longer drive. If I were to ever leave Newfoundland, my introverted self will miss being able to wander an hour away, and put up a tent without many worries of anyone else showing up or having to share the grounds of a provincial park.

Not to mention that even though I think the ocean is overrated, I have to admit that having a oceanfront campsite all to myself is special.

I'd eventually retreat to my car, excited that baseball was restarting under COVID restrictions and that tonight my Orioles were taking on the dreaded Sawx. The only problem was the Orioles were already losing 12-1 as I tuned in, smh.

So I changed the channel and then excitedly texted Steven Twodamncute because the old school rap station was playing Ghetto Dope by Master P.

The next morning, I pulled the car over at the sight of this abandoned house in Black Duck Brook, aka. L'Anse-aux-Canards.

I was up at the crack of dawn as I needed to get back and check on the dog, but another thing I needed to do was add an abandoned building of some sort to this trip...Kingsley could wait!

Clutching to the door frame, I swung over the rotting floor and inside, right in front of this fantastic old stove.

I'm always amazed at how infrequently I find stoves/pool tables/clawfoot tubs collapsed through the floor.

Eventually wandering to the back of the property, there was a 50-foot cliff leading down to the beach below. I pondered the possibility of a rope or sliding down to the shore, wondering if the residents here were ever able to take advantage of their oceanfront property.

Lourdes was the next town with an actual gas station, where I wandered inside and asked about the air compressor in order to fill my BMX tire. The woman working told me that they used to have an air hose, but after repeated thefts of the end piece that connects to your valve stem, they gave up on trying to provide air ten years ago.

I laughed at how you can drive around a place like the Port au Port and everything seems so chill, but there's still skeetiness lying below the surface.

Anyway, she then told me that since none of the Port au Port gas stations have air pumps, that nearly every house has a compressor and that I could just pick a random house, walk up with my bike, and get my tire filled.

I thanked her, but holy heck was this something my shy ass wasn't going to do, haha.

It was a shame too, as I had recently discovered the new "skatepark" in Cap Saint-Georges.

I guess these sweet Freshpark ramps were going to have to wait.

It looked like there were even more ramps waiting to be reassembled too, even though I know they still weren't put together in 2022. This area gets much less snow than Corner Brook, so maybe an April or May drive is in order in 2023.

The ramps do look pretty good when assembled, especially when you factor in that only 800 people live in Cap Saint-Georges and Newfoundland towns have to have worst skateparks than their mainland counterparts.

The Cap Saint-Georges Freshpark has some decent scenery too.

Needing to get back to Corner Brook by 1pm meant I was up at 7am, allowing me to go for a another short mountain bike ride through some of the villages along this south coast of the Port au Port.

The above view is from the Cape St. George marina in the village of De Grau. It was fun to be able to ride my bike right out on to the cement wharf next to the fishing trawlers.

I would ride my bike over to Red Brook, although this is a view from Petit Jardin. The best part of the ride might've been how I was wearing a baggy sweater and jeans while riding a rickety bike, where I then came around a corner to find mountain bikers going the other way on a group ride, decked out in Lycra outfits and drafting each other.

Actually, the best part was probably the grackles I saw in Grand Jardin, lol.

Anyway, my ride would wrap up about 30 minutes after the Grand Jardin grackles, where I then busted my hump to get home following a reinvigorating 18 hours of cycling and camping.